Languages survey

[godwin@ICSE.UCI.EDU (Dave Godwin)]

Hi folks.
	This survey bit took a little longer than expected; replies have
continued to trickle in.  In total, I received responses from 74 locations.
These locations range from university cs departments to university research
teams to industry r&d to 'this is what we use at work every day' from large
banks and other typical sites.  The results were not ( to me ) surprising,
but I think that many of you will be, so let's talk about it.
	Keep in mind that these replies are mostly from locations working
on the cutting edge of our industry; the subject was 'what languages are
you working with now', not 'what have you been maintaining recently'.  The
survey was sent out to bboards discussing Pascal, Ada, Software engineering,
micro computers, and on site at various Rockwell, Hughes, Lockheed, Navy
and Air Force plants.  ( This may not have covered all of the population,
but it do come close. )


language	percentage use
-------------------------------
Pascal    	36.45
C	     	25.65
FORTRAN    	13.5
Modula-2   	5.40
Forth   	5.40
COBOL   	4.05
Ada   		4.05
miscillaneous	~5.00	( This includes all sorts of strange stuff )

	The miscillaneous catagory is filled with languages used at only
one location reported, and then that language is usually not highly used.
Languages mentioned include Snobol 4, Simula, PL/I, and assorted assembly
and macro stuff. 

	Thanks much to the folks at Columbia, Rutgers, UC Berkely and a certain
Hughes location for the nice, extensive replies.  These were most helpfull.

		Dave Godwin
		University of California, Irvine
		godwin@icse.uci.edu

p.s. ( There was one response I found rather amusing.  There is a large group
	at Rockwell.  Which site, and which project they are working on is not
	important.  The project contract says that the software source that
	gets turned in to the buyer must be written in either FORTRAN or the
	assembly language for the given machine.  The engineers in this group
	prefer to do things in a more comfortable fashion.  They write 
	everything in Pascal, which makes thing much easier for them.  They
	compile their Pascal programs, and test them, run them, get satisfied
	with them.  They then run the Pascal code files through the dis-
	assembler, and send the buyer a nice long assembly listing like the
	contract asked for.  Everybody winds up happy. :-) )